Disappointment over delays without adequate cause and lost baggage evaporated as the hotel’s  airport greeter  ushered us to the limo outside Nassau’s airport and promised to have our lost bag to us by the end of the day.

Butlers and butler-level service are a welcome pick-me-up or antidote to the increasingly poor service one experiences in other service industries, and only serve to illustrate the truth of trendwatching.com’s proclamation that “Brand Butler” is the most important trend in the corporate world for 2010.

For the majority of us (myself included) who cannot afford butler service, there is a solution: start applying butler mindset and standards to all service industries. As the US manufacturing industry is now something like 9% of GDP, the rest must be service industries. So unless we all want to drown in mutual frustration, it may be time to bring service standards out of the basement.

So I turned in all my old medium format equipment, and older digital stills and video cameras, and was given 5 cents on the dollar,

all of which went toward the purchase of my new Canon 5D Mark II and 28-300 mm lens.

Let the fun begin!

Views from our hotel room.

If a wo/man is as alive as he can communicate, then these butlers are most certainly alive